1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a system and a method for managing an application or software component for use in a device to be controlled in a home network environment, and more particularly, to a system and a method for managing an application wherein a function of a device to be controlled can be dynamically extended by continually updating the application for use in the appliance. The present application is based on Korean Patent Application No. 10-2003-0000058, which is incorporated herein by reference.
2. Description of the Related Art
A home network system is a system for connecting and controlling PCs, peripheral equipment, mobile phones, electric home appliances, and the like through one network. A proposed method to configure the home network system is such that a common virtual computer environment called middleware is built into home appliances, and applications are provided for the appliances. Here, the middleware is capable of communicating between appliances in a home network. The currently available middleware includes home AV interoperability (HAVi), universal plug and play (UPnP™), Jini™ home wide web (HWW), and the like.
However, as functions of appliances improve and become more complicated, the need to install the latest application in addition to the application already installed upon purchase thereof has increased. For example, if a TV can support a high-quality sound format (e.g., surround sound, stereo, etc.) but a poor tuner cannot support the high-quality format, the high-quality format cannot be used.
According to such a trend, technologies for providing new applications for use in controlled devices have developed. For example, Korean Patent Application No. 2000-7007449 (of which the title of invention is a method and system related an audio/video network) discloses a method capable of supporting a more superior performance through a device driver updated in such a manner that the device driver is updated when the appliance to be controlled is connected with the home network system.
FIGS. 1 and 2 are diagrams illustrating a method of installing a conventional application, and illustrate a method of installing the application in a HAVi home network system in which a control device, i.e. full AV device (FAV), capable of installing and executing the application based on the IEEE 1394 and a controlled device, i.e. base AV device (BAV), are connected with each other.
Here, the IEEE 1394 is a high-speed serial bus (interface) for connecting several appliances in the home with one another, and a device control module (DCM) is a software component for controlling the appliance to be controlled, i.e. an application programming interface (API) needed when a user intends to use a function of a device. In particular, the DCM is obtained by installing a bytecode of the DCM and should exist in the FAV in order to control the device. Further, the bytecode of the DCM may reside in the BAV or exist at other locations, e.g. at a file server on the Internet.
As shown in FIG. 1, in a case where a bytecode 121 of a DCM resides in a BAV 120, an FAV 110 causes the bytecode 121 of the DCM to be loaded from a memory of the BAV 120 and the loaded bytecode to be installed therein, when the BAV 120 is connected with the home network system. Alternatively, as shown in FIG. 2, in a case where a bytecode 231 of a DCM resides in a file server 230, an FAV 210 causes a URL of the DCM to be read from a memory of a BAV 220 and then causes the read bytecode 231 to be loaded from the file server 230 and the loaded bytecode to be installed therein, when the BAV 220 is connected with the home network system.
However, such an application installation method is restrictively applied to the HAVi home network based on the IEEE 1394 technique, because it can be executed only with the IEEE 1394 for supporting a hot plug-and-play. Further, since it is determined that the FAV should install and manage the application, there is a problem in that a large load is imposed on the FAV due to operations of installing and managing the applications for the several BAVs connected with the home network.
Furthermore, since the FAV is configured to install the DCM only once upon initial connection of the BAVs with the home network, there is another problem in that it is difficult to provide continual application update services.